Its been a bit busy and then it was April!!! I don’t think I saw January this time or February or for that matter even March! – we definitely landed straight to April. #nokidding. (is it global warming??) ……………. And then May is the birthday month, I had to had to had to go for a vacation that I promised myself years ago. So well….. its just been a bit delayed….(hiding my face now)
Excuses No More! (socks all pulled up and me….armoured! )
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Space – 590 Sq feet – Working in a Nutshell | Edit #2
|manymanythings for ExpostFacto| 2015, the year when we were on an experimental mode and Piyush Raghani (Director and Founder of the production house ‘Like Minded People‘- from our first collaboration) wanted another space – not another office but an Edit Studio for colour grading and offline editing of films and other broadcasted media. A studio space – “yeahhhh!” was our first reaction, but with all its thrill came many challenges and technicalities. Of the many, one confrontation was to be with the acoustics of the place, to cut down sound travel from one room to the other and doing so without bulky construction. The other, how-do-you-do was keeping the already small space dark and killing any external source of light for the very purpose of a studio room is to disengage. Now, we love windows and all sunlight but sometimes you-have-to-do-what-you-have-to-do and so we were to turn everything to our advantage rather brood about it!
#Didyouknow there are soundproofing wallpapers available now in India and blackout textiles can turn any room into a personal theatre? (Scroll away….)
Look and Mood: The Pursuit of Pixels and Exposing Glitches.
It was to be bare, minimum, yet kinetic. The idea has been to use natural textures and keep the space raw yet connect it with a notion of movement – through graphics that break out, electrical pipes running onto a smokey ceiling, using lights on tracks and keeping furniture on wheels – everything to best the design and the pocket. Materials used therefore were brick for the walls, asbestos sheets for all cement finishes, metal for cabinets and accents, teak and walnut wood for furniture and finishes of paint – smokey not smooth.
The brand identity helped us in structuring the mood, pallet and ideas further. While Roshnee had the required brand language already in place inspired by the timeline grids of various audio and video softwares post production houses work with, Avinash turned the same to his own symphony that broke out and stitched together graphic glitches in one space.
We wanted to block the glass cabins and not block them completely – this space needed to breathe and it was the glitch art set in motion that eased the rather small area just absolutely as intended. The plotter cut black vinyl on the partitions pasted on eye levels and beyond aid your eyes to travel along and explore the space on its own.
The two rooms – color grading and the offline edit have had their own special needs – Color Grading required absolute blackout and offline needed minimum sound travel. Now we have used blackout fabrics and blinds many a times for we have always felt that there needs to be an option for sunlight to sweep in when needed instead of a permanent block. What we were hunting for was the least voluminous sound proofing solution. Defurn tempted us with a wide range of well designed acoustic panels but our little space couldn’t support the costs of importing the same. We also couldn’t afford to loose the 2″-3″ depth taken off the walls that the panels would take and the fixed sizes they came in. Bummer!! They looked too cool. We had to find a friendlier option and we did hit a jackpot – Ego Wall Decor introduced us to a range of acoustic wallpapers!!!! Can you believe that!! Takes no space, easy to clean and comes in all possible textures and colors!!! Bingo!!!!
One way we turned glitch and geometrics of the editing softwares to our advantage, on the other we persuaded pixels in the design story of the furniture, fabrics and walls. Our space cadet Diti Mistry (my little intern) helped with the illustrations on this story working on 8-bit colour graphics – creating our own character play to break the mundane of the space. These were further hand painted to appear from the electrical wiring pipes, furniture and walls and play pop to the entire design. We have used neutrals all over to support and not distract but this burst of selected pastels pallet was a much needed one.
My most favourite are the poufs on wheels from this same 8-bit illustrations story upholstered in digitally printed cotton satin. ‘Boo’ says one head and the other is a splitter splatter in space. The same prints have been also used to upholster the mid-high chairs placed in the open office side near the window and suspended table top.
I will be honest, it was a field day everyday and we have had fallouts but everything did come up as planned and we learned something new at every little step. Studio is located at the heart of Bandra just above Smoke House Deli offering the best of coffees and cookies and breakfasts and luncheons and tea and sometimes packed dinners – we had very long days and even longer evenings and they became our very generous companions – Thank you much 🙂
Another set of people that we need to specially mention are Namdevji working under the guidance of Mithun D’suza who helped us with all the massive electrical’s and were particularly patient in explaining the details, weight and colour coding of all wiring and machinery.
And at the end we did have happy clients and happy clients of clients working in the studios. Soooo – Yeah!!!! – We got sHiT done!!
*All photographs by Kunal Bhatia from Studio Kunal Bhatia
*Product Sources: Hesperus, Anemos, D’decor, Defurn, Ego Wall Decor, Chor Bazaar, Tappu ki Dukaan,